Newton’s Laws of Motion By: Sarah Grunert and Jessica Meredith

Newton’s Laws and Explanation The first law of motion (or the law of inertia) states that all objects at rest will continue to stay at rest and all objects in motion will continue to be in motion. However, when acted upon by an unbalanced force, objects will accelerate when they have been resting, and objects can slow down and stop due to friction or any other kind of unbalanced force. The second law of motion is that acceleration of an object depends on the mass of the object and how much force is put on it. It can be described in the equation of a(acceleration)=F net (net force)/m(mass) or F net =mxa. So basically the greater mass an object has, the more force you will need to accelerate it. The third law of motion is for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. What this means is when there is a force acting on an object in a certain direction, there will be one going the opposite direction at the same magnitude.

Procedure Materials: – Pool ball – Ping Pong ball – Barrier of some kind 1.Place both balls on a flat surface with the barrier 1-2 feet away 2.Gently push both balls at the same time 3.Observe

Demonstration and How Laws are Shown The demonstration starts as two balls, one a lightweight Ping-Pong ball and the other a pool ball, sitting on the table at rest, which displays the first law of motion because the balls will continue to be at rest unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. Next, both balls will be pushed at the same time. Once pushed, the objects will be in motion until friction slows the balls down to a stop, representing the first law of motion again (it will stay in motion forever until an unbalanced force acts upon it). It will take much more force to accelerate the pool ball compared to the Ping-Pong ball, which can be explained using the second law. These two balls will run into a barrier and push off in the other direction equally as hard as pushed against the barrier. This explains Newton’s third law of motion because it shows that for every action (ball gets pushed into a barrier) there is an opposite reaction (barrier pushes back just as hard and ball goes opposite direction).

Research Researched laws first by using and teachertech.rice.eduwww.thephysicsclassroom.com Looked for demonstration on many websites until we came across one at html?ref=Track2&utm_source=ask html?ref=Track2&utm_source=ask The demonstration stated for someone to spin two eggs, one hardboiled and the other raw. While they are spinning, gently stop them with your finger and let go. The hardboiled egg should stop while the raw one should start spinning again because the yolk inside the egg will continue to spin due to inertia after the egg has been stopped. There were two problems. One was that it was extremely hard to bring in eggs without them cracking or going bad. The other was that it only demonstrated the first law of motion. We problem solved and used two different balls of different mass and changed the procedure by pushing instead of spinning the object and by making them run into a barrier.